Farmers, hydroelectric power producers, shippers and wildlife managers remember the Columbia River Basin drought of 1992-1993 as a year of misery.
Now researchers using tree-ring data have determined six multiyear droughts between 1750 and 1950 that were much more severe than anything in recent memory because they persisted for years, including one that stretched for 12 years. “Imagine what a drought lasting that long would do to the resources and economy of the region today,” says D
Older patients can take heart in new transplantation study
Policy makers who use age as a discriminating factor in determining eligibility for heart transplant surgery may want to reconsider their rules in the light of new research at the University of Alberta. Published in the Journal of Cardiac Surgery, the study shows that older heart transplant recipients fare just as well as their younger counterparts, even many years after surgery.
The study involved all 275 adu
A highly sensitive post-mortem test could help scientists more accurately determine if a person died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a human neurological disorder caused by the same class of infectious proteins that trigger mad cow disease, according to a new study supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The finding opens the possibility that such testing might be refined in the future so it can be used to detect prion disease in living people and animals before the o
Geoffrey Loftus’ latest research reads more like a murder mystery than a scientific paper.
The University of Washington psychologist’s new study opens with a savage beating and murder on the streets of Fairbanks, Alaska. It features cameo appearances by Julia Roberts and other celebrities. It ends with the conviction of two men based on the eyewitness identification of the defendants from a distance of 450 feet. And, in a post-script, an appeals court orders a new trial
A possible diagnostic use for clot-dissolving drugs such as tPA has been found by Medical College of Georgia researchers working to improve a test that identifies potentially deadly blood clots in the legs.
“This study is a fairly simple concept,” says Dr. Vincent J.B. Robinson, nuclear cardiologist at MCG and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Augusta and lead author of a study in the February issue of CHEST detailing how clot-busting drugs such as tPA, already used to tr
Leishmaniases and trypanosomiases are parasitic diseases which kill several thousands of people per year, mainly in developing countries. The effectiveness of existing treatments is being called into question owing to their toxicity and the emergence of resistance. A family of alkaloids, the quinolines, could be a worthwhile new therapeutic line to follow. Following on from the discovery of anti-leishmaniasis activity in natural quinolines, a research team of IRD, Pasteur Institute and CNRS sci
The mechanisms that govern the relation between personal mobility and transmission of the AIDS virus (HIV) are still poorly known. Surveys conducted in the River Senegal Valley by two demographers from the IRD and the University of Montreal suggest that the way individuals returning to their community of origin deal with sexual risks depends on the migratory paths (internal or international migrations) and the social pressures prevailing in that community. Such influences cause most migrants to
Combinatorial drug therapies, effective for cancer and AIDS, show potential for Huntington’s and other neurodegenerative diseases
UC Irvine researchers have identified several promising drug compounds that when combined show the potential to treat Huntington’s disease.
In tests on fruit flies, Larry Marsh and Leslie Thompson found that combinatorial drug therapies developed from these compounds halted the brain-cell damage caused by the fatal, progressive neurodegener
Participants who quit had a 46% lower death rate
In a new study of 5,887 middle-aged smokers with mild lung disease, those who were randomly assigned to a quit-smoking program had a lower death rate than those assigned to usual care, even though only 21.7 percent of them actually quit smoking.
The annual death rates were 8.8 per 1000 participants in the quit-smoking program and 10.4 per 1000 in the usual care group. The annual death rates for those who actually quit was e
Several popular plans for the revamping the Social Security system contain clauses that could fail to significantly protect older women, according to research reported in the February 2005 issue of The Gerontologist (Vol. 45, No. 1). The study discusses the potential effects of implementing several different minimum benefits scenarios in Social Security, which have accompanied proposals to reform the program.
While Social Security does not currently have a minimum benefit, this w
To avoid damage from too much oxygen, say researchers, challenging previous theories
A new study investigating the respiratory system of insects may have solved a mystery that has intrigued physiologists for decades: why insects routinely stop breathing for minutes at a time.
Challenging previous theories, researchers at UC Irvine and Humboldt University propose that insects such as grasshoppers, moths, butterflies, some types of fruit flies, beetles and bugs close o
What is the connection between a fly’s aerodynamic skill and human heart function? Using the nation’s most brilliant X-rays, located at the Advanced Photon Source at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, a cardiac molecular motors expert from the University of Vermont (UVM) and colleagues from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and Caltech performed research to answer that and other questions.
The research team, including David Maughan, Ph.D., res
An analysis of previously uncharted chemical contents, mostly carbohydrates, in U.S.-consumed mushrooms shows that these fruity edible bodies of fungi could be tailored into dietary plans to help fill various nutritional needs.
Using modern analytic tools, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that the six mushroom varieties tested – in raw and cooked forms and at various harvest times and maturity levels – are rich in total dietary fibers, including
CSIRO’s radio telescopes and others in Australia, China, Japan and the USA have revealed how the wind speeds on Saturn’s moon Titan vary with altitude-and have turned a disappointment into a triumph.
As the Huygens probe plummeted through Titan’s atmosphere on 14 January it transmitted a stream of data to its parent Cassini spacecraft. The ground-based radio telescopes ’eavesdropped’ on the probe’s signal. As the probe was buffeted by Titan’s w
Paradox suggests reasons why COX-2 inhibitors hurt and help.
Laboratory studies at Johns Hopkins have revealed that certain products of the enzymes COX-1 and COX-2 can both protect and damage the brain. The findings, published in the February 2005 issue of the Journal of Neurochemistry, offer tantalizing clues to why drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex, which block COX-2, can ease arthritis but potentially harm the heart and brain.
Katrin Andreasson, M.D., an assistant profess
New findings from the Lung Health Study (LHS) show that intensive smoking cessation programs can significantly improve long-term survival among smokers. Supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), LHS is a landmark study that differs from many other studies of cigarette smoking in that it was a randomized, controlled clinical trial — considered the gold standard in determining cause and effect; furthermore, the size and duration of LHS enabled it to more accurately mea
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